well, first off I must tell you guys that I am feeling that I can be fully honest here, at least more honest… what I am trying to say is that I funnily cannot be as honest to my doctor or to my therapist than I can be here, that’s why I said that I can feel I can be ‘more’ honest. I don’t know… I guess it is perhaps the fact that I am being behind the blue screen and there’s no one in front of me. plus, I can feel that you people can be more sympathetic that them and that’s mostly because, I guess, most of you are going through similar situations as I do.
so anyway, here’s a little bit of a background information to start off… I have been using diazepam as well as alprazolam and as of recent I have also been prescribed by my doctor some amphetamines in order to fight off the stresses of education and work too… as well as this, I am indulging in certain activities that are depleting the serotonin whenever I am going out and I am being left with dopamine to work with. well, this has now ‘run out’ and I am being left at a crossroad wondering whether I do need those serious and ‘severe’ mental health care that I am now involved in or whether to try to tough it out myself as I have done over the last 7 years now, this is a part of why I am constantly battling with my mind but there are also other reasons as well… I do know that I just can’t get any help with this so I am not going to ask what do I need to do as it greatly depends only on me, what I feel etc.

now, I also must say that I am what some people would call a high functioning drug addict person (I know this because I’ve heard about this). what I try to say is that though I am being prescribed by my doctor much of what I am using, it is what I am not that has perhaps triggered this thinking. I have been diagnosed and I have been treated for general anxiety disorder, for panic disorder as well as depression for the biggest part of my life, and to be honest – not doing very much to help myself. plus to that, I must say that I have also started to develop social anxiety and more of recent, I have been said (and I have checked it myself too) the signs are pointing out more to the direction that I am also having bipolar disorder or that at least I am ‘developing’ it now. as we all know, only the thought that being on such medications is… hard… so I can say with certitude that the idea of being on anti depressants or on anti psychotics that will barely numb me…. (I did have cycled through 5 different anti depressants already and I am having very little hope that any of them would ever help me) all are simply just leaving me with very little to even no sex drive at all and it is all numbing me to the point of feeling like I am a zombie. in fact, that’s what I am feeling like right now… I feel like I’m a zombie, a veggie – brain walking dead with no desire of doing anything and no motivation for absolutely anything at all… however, good thing is that I am not suicidal… I know that I’m not in the worst ever condition altough I am already feeling awful.. but I do know that there is still left space for even worse. so I’m glad that I am not suicidal and I do feel little point in getting up or moving out of bed, which is amazing in my situation. though, I can also say that there are some other days, amazingly good days in which I do feel great, shockingly great, n those days I even wish to achieve my goals… I have a bit of motivation to do so. the goals that still have left…

whatever the case… now, I can guess that what I am wondering is… how open I should be to my doctor and to my therapist in regards to all of this? do you think I really must be fully honest? to be honest, I really do not like the idea of being admitted to a psych ward and that’s, of course, because I do not feel like being crazy… but then I start thinking that all crazy people are saying that they are not crazy so… this thought makes me think of… am I really crazy? on the other hand, I am an ‘intellectual’ academic with a great job if you ask me… but lack something which I just cannot find… I’ve gotta say that I do not believe in love, I know LOTS of people would say that this is wrong… but I just don’t believe in it, I mean, in other than the love of family of course and any chance I’ve had to forward a relationship it is getting destroyed before I can even attempt to try to put the pieces together and to build the confidence that I need to ask a girl out. I mean… I don’t even have the basic of just getting out with a girl.. of asking her to get out with me. oftentimes because I am thinking… if she gets out with me… what then? there are a lot of other things as well, but those are just some that I wanted to share… sorry if someone got bored reading my post but I wanted to say that I am really thankful to this site and to everyone else involved here for letting me rant… I do know that there are a lot of people who would agree with me, would agree on the fact that ranting, sometimes, it is more helpful than any medicine and any doctor out there. again, thanks a lot and sorry for doing anything wrong. now, with all of this in mind… can, any of you, tell me what wrong with me? thanks again!

OP, hi, you’ve gotta know that there is absolutely nothing that’s wrong with you, but there are only some things that do appear to be skewed somewhat in the way that you are thinking. other than that, everything’s just fine, and be sure that there’s nothing wrong with you. and also, since you are saying that this is what you are ‘not’ being prescribed which has triggered that way of thinking, then it has to somehow either fit into your equation or you have to find a way to completely remove or eliminate it, and by saying this I am trying to get your attention to the extra medications that are taken above prescribed by your doctor.

since you asked for our opinion on this, I will give you mine, and I will tell you: I do think that you must be fully open with your doctor. I honestly think that you really should. by doing so he is going to refer you onward to someone who is better qualified people who could help you in the mental game, people who are dealing with such kind of problems and who stand best chances to help you out. from as much as I understand, you are not sure whether you must be fully honest with your doctor or not because you are being afraid of being admitted to a psych ward and that’s because that would make you think that you are a crazy person. first off, even if you would be admitted there, it DEFINITELY doesn’t mean you are crazy. I know people who were/ are in psych ward and they are intelligent people, with good manners, etiquette, good way of thinking etc. they are just having some issues. this might be your case too. but secondly, I very highly doubt that you will be admitted to a psych ward! not sure if you understand it but that is only an example of your overriding depression talking in you.

to be honest, I am thinking that there are plenty of people that are looking for that something that they are simply not able to find… and to be honest, what it is making it all the harder it is the fact when you don’t even know what you are searching in the end… if you know what I mean. people constantly search for something but most of them just don’t know what exactly for. only those who do know what they are searching are finding that. the rest are searching nothing. you’ve just got to know for sure what do you search. only the feeling of being incomplete in the life… I do know very well that it can completely eat away at anyone and to bring up some really mixed up feelings on it and those are surely not any kind of ‘good feelings’.

Also I want to add that even though I am not a psychologist or anything in this matter, I still do think that you are really wanting to build a relationship with someone, however, for whichever the reason, you have not been able to build one so far… and it does seems to me like this is, in fact, that something that you are in lack for and that you are continuing to search. This is the reason why, I guess, you are hurt and why you say that you are not believing in love. If that’s true, you’ve gotta realize this and so, this is now found. I mean, it is found the reason behind why you are depressed and what you really search for. As I said, knowing what you are searching is essential!

From this moment on I doubt that I can help you with much as I don’t know how and what to advice you in how you can approach a girl and how to ask her out. I just don’t know how to properly treat a girl and I am generally not a good expert in such things. I just know that there are people who are experts and who can help you with such stuff. It may sound absurd but I think that reading online such kind of stuff might help as well… I tell you this because this is what really sounds that you are in need of currently and that’s due to the fact that it does seem to me like you are pretty much happy with the other parts of your life such as career.

With all of this mentioned, I can say with certitude that in the end there’s nothing wrong with you. That’s just a problem that seem to have a pressure on you… as you said, you are not being able to even ask a girl out. What you can say that is wrong with you is that you lack the self confidence in your ability to find and to start to build a relationship with a person. This is the reason why it seems to me that you’ve gotta start learning techniques of how to deal with this lack of self confidence and when you’re going to do it and be in a serious relationship, I do think that most (if not your entire) depression would go away.

What I have to say here is that you do seem to have confidence in your career, this means that you are fine in having confidence generally. What I think is that there are some ways that you can move the confidence and the success you have in your career over as well into your personal life skills and as soon as you do it, you’re going to be able to start asking a girl out and building relationship that seemingly you dream of. Unfortunately, I just don’t know any ways that you can do it, but most importantly is that you do have it, you do have that confidence in general, so just finding that way that you can use it in all aspects of your life is easier than finding and building confidence in general… I do think that people who lack confidence completely are struggling more. As I said, I am not an expert, but I will try to help so from as much as I think, the first thing that you’ve gotta do know it is to stop second guessing yourself with every move. That’s the sign of having lack of self confidence. Instead of guessing it all just do it. And I would also recommend to try to get rid of that anxiety or that fear that you seem to have that there is going to be something bad or unpleasant that is going to happen about consulting and trying to get help from somebody that is qualified to assist and help you. That’s because they are QUALIFIED to assist you, of course they would, but that’s if you’re going to get fully open only, otherwise I doubt that they can do much… just think about this for a second… you just can’t help someone without knowing what’s wrong with the person. Isn’t it? I do understand that you might be anxious over this and that you might want to avoid being fully honest with doctors, but trust me, there’s nothing bad that would happen. In fact, I just think that only good things can happen.

Well… that’s pretty much everything that I can say in regards to this. Maybe it doesn’t seem to be too helpful or not a too much amount or I don’t know… but in the end, the most important thing is… you are not crazy. And yeah, really, there’s just nothing wrong with you. We are all anxious, we are all afraid of mistakes and we are all DOING mistakes. That’s absolutely normal, we are all human! Wish you good luck!

Ummm… I’m sorry but… Ardegia… I just can’t understand you… I mean… you said that you do not like to be honest with this current doctor so you are now searching another specialist… umm… I don’t judge you at all BUT… if you do decide to go again through all the problems and through (from as much as I can guess) all of the expenses of going and consulting with another medical doctor then… I can’t understand why you would not be fully open and completely truthful… I mean, it is like paying for something and then leave it there. It’s like you are always having like for example a back pain and you purchase pain medications but you don’t take them, you just buy each time when you have a back pain some pain medications but you don’t use them. And then again you have a back pain and you go again to the pharmacy, buy another pain medication and don’t use it. Then in the end you just can’t understand why the back pain still persists and when someone asks you if you’ve done something about it you can freely say that you did purchased the medications and then everybody can’t understand why it keeps on hurting… but nobody knows that you only purchased them without using them… I mean, this might be a stupid example, I don’t know, and I really hope that you got my idea, but that’s pretty much the same here. Well… based on your question, does this mean that you have NOT been upfront with the physician that you now have? And yeah, also, since you say that you are a drug addict then I must ask you… have you got to the point (to the conclusion) where you understand that the addiction you have it is causing problems in your life and this is why it needs to be addressed to a specialist?

To be honest here, I don’t like at all the term that you have used up there… I am talking about the ‘high functioning addict’…. Don’t get me wrong and please don’t get offended as I obviously don’t know if this applies to you too or not… I just said that I don’t like this term and that’s because of my experience I have with this term which, typically, that’s only a method for a ‘high functioning addict’ to somehow try to deny or mostly to find an excuse for their well known behavior to be a troublesome behavior and then… ultimately… to keep on having that behavior. That’s because, most often, trying to change this means getting out of ‘comfort zone’ and let’s face it – who likes to get out of comfort zone? I also must say that such a combination of benzodiazepines that you mentioned you use (diazepam and alprazolam) and speed (amphetamines, but we used to call it speed) can really cause all sorts of side effects and including the behavior changes too.. unless it is not being very closely watched by a professional doctor. I did have read that your doctor prescribed all these to you so I do think that it must be safe and I really hope you’re gonna be. just be careful about not taking different doses of those things other than those prescribed by your doctor because, as I said, adverse reactions might occur which can be really… bad, to say the least.

I’m not trying to appear as if I know it all or as if I’m a professional in all these things because I am not, however your post really tells to me (or, again, it seems to me like so) that you have pretty much got into a critical point in your life and as we all know, often this ends up really bad, this is the reason why I think that you need to get some treatment that it is more than your current doctors only, I mean, some more qualified professionals or something… that’s since we see that your current doctors aren’t able to help you. Most likely because you are not fully honest. And for being referred to more qualified professionals you must be fully honest with your current doctors. Again, just something I think about it and my opinion… I think that you must do it all and I hope a lot that you do understand, in fact, the big seriousness of what you are getting through right now (something I noticed from what you have written up there) and that you need to get help ASAP. If you’re going to leave it like that hoping that you’re going to ‘tough’ it out as you said that you were doing it for years, it would go even worse, as it already did, as much as you can see. Good luck!